(April 20, 2008) The International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran is appealing to the head of Iran’s Judiciary, Ayatollah Mahmoud Hashemi Shahroudi, to review the sentencing by an appeals court of three students, Ehsan Mansouri, Majid Tavakoli and Ahmad Ghasaban to prison terms. The students’ lawyer, Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, has appealed to the Judiciary to review the sentencing in light of complete lack of evidence in issuing the sentence. The Campaign deeply regrets the decision, not only because three clearly innocent young people have been unfairly condemned after torture and ill-treatment, but because it demonstrates the vulnerability of the Iranian people to the whims and prejudices of a system lacking accountability, transparency, and fairness.
“This miscarriage of justice case is a disgrace to Iran because the appeal process violated Iranian law and international standards. The case needs to be reviewed at the highest level by a committee of independent judges,” the Campaign stated.
On 15 April 2008, an appeals court sentenced the three students from Teheran’s elite Amir Kabir University to prison terms of about two years each on charges of having spread anti-Islamic images and propaganda against the state. The charges against the students were initially dropped by the lower court in the absence of the presentation of sufficient factual evidence supporting the charges by the prosecutors.
Confessions, which had been extracted under severe torture, were subsequently retracted by the three young men. The appeals court decision was not based on the presentation of any evidence. The lawyer for the students stated, “These students were sentenced without any reason.”
The case has been a matter of serious concern for the International Campaign for Human Rights in Iran, which included the accused students among the Prisoners of Conscience it has tried to support (www.iranhumanrights.org/en/themes/profiles/). The sentence deserves to be condemned in the strongest terms by all governments, intergovernmental organizations, and civil society groups that uphold international human rights standards and standards for fair and responsible trials.
“Indeed, what transpired was not a legitimate trial at all, but rather an officially sanctioned attempt to destroy the reputations and future of three promising young people by crudely manipulating the courts. The judicial system itself is a victim in this case. It has been ruthlessly exploited to accommodate blatantly political and subjective motives; rules of procedure, facts, evidence, logic, and the law itself have been ignored,” the Campaign stated.
it is easy to predict that the success of student activists in imposing their will and demands on government officials at academic institutions, such as the Teachers Training college and Zanjan University (where the students boldly took the initiative into their own hands), would result in a backlash by extreme right-wing officials who would plan an “instructive” counter-attack against the student movement.Hopefully such a reaction will not come. But from an analytic perspective, one must not negate it altogether. We hope that by being alert and preventive measures, the student movement will be able to pass the next few weeks and months with minimum turbulence and costs.
This is the reason that the moment imprisoned students step out of prison, it becomes clear to every one why they were put behind bars: for simply criticizing the president. It becomes instantly clear why they were subjected to interrogations and what questions were asked of them. These are the events that portray the image of this country. Students, social activists and journalists are certainly not on the list of those that dent this image. The publication of the arrest of students because of their criticism of the president brings forth a caricature image of Mahmud Ahmadinejad which does not match the claims that he made at Columbia University or the image that the regime strives to present about its standing.
There are at least 70 young people on death row who at the time of their arrest were under the age of 16. In the past 12 months, Iranian organisations claim that 80 feminists have been arrested and 20 of them have been sentenced from three to five years in jail. A total of 54 journalists have ended up in prison, several were released without trial after serving jail time, while others remain behind bars. In the past 12 months, 34 newspapers and magazines, among them the feminist magazine Zanan, have been shut down.
The families of Majid Tavakoli, Ahmad Ghasaban, and Ehsan Mansouri are releasing a Disclosing Statement of suffering to Ayatollah Hashemi Shadroudi, in an attempt to reveal what has happed to these three students while in prison. This letter states that 80 days after the trial of these three individuals, they are enduring mental and physical injuries as a result of being imprisoned and it has been requested of the judiciary to report on their condition.
Western diplomats and rights groups see the detention of women activists as part of a wider crackdown on dissent, which they say may be in response to Western pressure over Iran’s nuclear work. Iranian authorities have also clamped down on "immoral behaviour", including women flouting the strict Islamic dress code, since Mahmoud Ahmadinejad won the presidency in 2005 with his pledge to revive revolutionary values. The women's rights activists say their campaign is not focused on what they wear, even if outsiders see conservative dress codes as a symbolic and visible barrier to equality.
